GalCiv2 was a great game and I spent way too many hours on it, but one thing that always kinda rubbed me the wrong way was that it basically forced you into an early colony rush to grab the best planets ASAP. Anybody going for a more sedate rate of expansion would find themselves left in the dust by the rushers (and the AI was fiendishly good at it).
I feel a sequel would be greatly improved by having a mechanism to limit this, or maybe offer incentives to stay small. Similar to how Civ V handled it, possibly, with their penalties to research and cultural development.
